Rise of the Horde

by Christie Golden

  A courier had been sent ahead, so there were plenty of bonfires roaring and food and drink for the hungry "guests," Many of the Frostwolves gave up their own lodging for the visitors, so that those who would head into battle the following morning would rest as well as possible. Durotan met with Orgrim and the others who would lead the assault, sketching out a layout of the city as best he and Orgrim could recall it.

  By daybreak, the war party—a small army of ores— was on the move. They passed into the meadows that surrounded the Terokkar forest, where so long ago Orgrim and Durotan had raced as youths and been startled by the appearance of an ogre.

  No lumbering giants troubled the vast wave of ores as they moved steadily toward their destination this morning. Durotan was in the front, riding beside Orgrim on Nightstalkcr. They were silent, but Durotan did not miss the fact that Orgrim's gray eyes lingered on the site where two boys had been rescued by draenei warriors.

  "The years have been long since we passed this way," Durotan said.

  Orgrim nodded. "I am not even sure we have the right direction. The forest and fields have changed and grown, and there were precious few landmarks originally-''

  Durotan said heavily, "I remember the way." He wished he did not. A pile of stones here, a strange-shaped outcropping there was enough to guide him. It looked like nothing to anyone else. Blackhand had told his troops that the draenei were able to disguise their city. Even so, Durotan's sharp cars caught slight murmurings of concern. He frowned.

  "We are drawing close," he said. "We must be quiet.

  There is an excellent chance that We will have been seen and reported already."

  The war party grew silent then. With a few gestures, Orgrim dispatched some of his outriders to scout the area. Durotan's mind went back to that twilight, when he, too, was worried about where they were going and what the draenei had planned for him.

  He brought his wolf to a halt and dismounted. Nightstalkcr shook his head and scratched his cars absently. It was here ... or close to here. . . . Durotan felt a desperate hope that perhaps the draenei remembered that they had exposed their secret to him, that they had changed the hiding place of the magical stone upon which their protection depended.

  There was no telltale rock beneath which the green gem was secreted. Durotan's memory would have no aid in uncovering it. He concentrated, walking slowly, hearing the jangling of tack and the soft clinking of armor as the others watched and waited. He closed his eyes to aid his concentration, saw again Restalaan kneeling on the ground, moving aside leaves and pine needles to uncover—

  Durotan opened his eyes and moved a few steps to his left. He said a quick prayer to the ancestors; whether it was asking for help in finding the stone or in not finding it, he was not certain. Mailed hands reached down and brushed away layers of detritus and then touched something cool and hard.

  There is no turning back now. Durotan closed his fingers around the gem and picked it up.

  Even in his distraught state of mind, he could sense the stone emanating a comforting energy. It nestled in his palm as if it belonged there. Durotan ran his left index finger over it, drawing out this moment before everything would change irrevocably

  "You found it." breathed Orgrim. who had silently stepped up to his friend. Durotan was overcome with emotion and could not speak for a moment. He merely nodded, then tore his gaze from the beautiful, pulsating stone and looked up at the awestruck faces gazing at the treasure he held.

  Orgrim nodded brusquely. "Get into position," he said, "We have been fortunate that there has been no advance warning."

  The stone was so calming to hold, Durotan wanted nothing better than to simply stand and look into its depths, but he knew that he had already made his choice. He took a deep breath and spoke the words that Restalaan had spoken so long ago in this same place.

  "Kehla men samir, solay Uimaa kahl."

  He wanted to believe that his thick, orcish accent would not activate the stone. That he was able to fulfill his obligation to his people without storming a small city full of civilians. But apparently the words were understood by whatever force controlled the green gem. The illusion was already dissipating, the trees and boulders shimmering into insubstantiality, and before the orcish war party a wide, paved road stretched as if in invitation.

  They needed no urging. The glorious city of the draenei lay before them, and with cries torn from over a hundred throats, the ores descended upon it.

  FIFTEEN

  Drek'Thar speaks in a broken voice of glories ruined, of beauty destroyed, of the slaughter of children. Through his tale runs the unspoken excuse: It seemed so right at the time. / imagine it did seem right. It did seem just. I can only pray to the ancestors that I am never placed in the same position as my father—torn between what I know in my heart is right and the defense of my people. It is why I continue to strive to uphold the tenuous peace between us and the Alliance.

  Because few offenses and insults in this or any other world are sufficient to warrant the slaughter of children.

  Later, Durotan would wonder how the city of Telmor had received no advance notice of a wave of mounted ores. He would never be able to speak with a draenei to find out. He could only assume that the draenei were so certain in their Hlusionary camouflage that the idea that it could be breached never occurred to them.

  The quiet air was rent with the sound of war cries and wolf howls as the riders stormed the streets of the city. Several unarmed draenei were cut down in the first few seconds of the assault. The white pavement was soon blue with spilled blood, but it did not take very long for the city guards to counterattack.

  Durotan had shoved the stone into his pack the moment he had finished using it; it would join the red and yellow stones he had taken from Velen. He mounted quickly and rode with grim determination, his axe at the ready. While he had made his own private vow that he would not attack an unarmed foe or a child, he had also made his choice, and was prepared to kill or die for it.

  The first wave flooded the city. A river of ores forked into streams, pouring into the large, spherical public buildings that branched off to cither side of the main street, surging up the wide stone steps. The warlocks brought up the rear. Their creatures were silent and obedient, save the small ones that muttered constantly under their breaths. They waited for the right moments to bring down the rain of fire, the bolt of shadows, the various curses of torment. The warriors emerged covered with blood, their boots tracking it down the wide steps as they continued on to the next building, and the next.

  The draenei guards were in the streets now, casting their own magics. Durotan turned in his saddle barely in time to deflect a blow from a sword that blazed with blue energy. The sword clanged against the head of his axe and jarred his arm to the bone. But that was nothing compared to the shock he felt at recognizing his attacker.

  For the second time, he and Restalaan were meeting in battle, Durotan had spared Velen, and in return. Restalaan had spared him when he was helpless before the draenei warrior. Durotan saw recognition in the other's eyes, then those glowing blue orbs narrowed.

  All debts between them were paid. This time, there would be no quarter given, on cither side.

  Restalaan cried something in his musical tongue. Instead of attacking again, he hauled Durotan from his saddle. Durotan was taken by surprise, and before he knew what was happening, he lay on the ground before his enemy. He reached for his axe as Restalaan swung his sword, thinking even as his fingers closed about the hilt that he would not be swift enough.

  Nightstalkcr, however, was trained almost as well as the orc who rode him. The instant the wolf felt his rider leave his back he whirled on Restalaan. Huge teeth crunched down on the draenei's arm. Had it not been for the protective armor Restalaan wore, his arm would have been severed instantly. As it was, the pressure was enough to cripple him and make him drop the sword. With a grunt, Durotan swung his axe as hard as he could. It slammed into Restalaan's midsection, its keen edge
cleaving through ihc armor to bite deep into his flesh.

  Restalaan fell to his knees, his useless arm still held fast by Nightstalkcr's teeth. The white wolf bit down harder, growling, and started worrying the draenei's

  arm as if it were a small animal. Within moments, the wolf would rip it off. Blood gushed from the wound in Restalaan's side. He made no sound despite the agony he must be enduring.

  Durotan got to his feet and struck again, this time a killing blow — a mercy blow. Restalaan sagged and Nightstalkcr immediately let go of the arm. The captain of the guards of Telmor was dead.

  Durotan did not permit himself regret. He mounted Nightstalkcr quickly and sought out his next target. There was no lack of them. The city was certainly not the size of Shattrath, their capital, but it was big enough. There were draenei aplenty to slaughter. The air was filled with cries of bioodlust, of pain and fear, of the clanging of sword on shield and the crackle of spells being cast. Odors assaulted his nostrils, of blood and feces and urine and the unmistakable, unique reck of terror.

  The rage boiling inside him felt good. His senses had never been higher, and he seemed to move without thinking. Over there—another one of the guards, fighting Orgrim. Durotan tensed, thinking to rush to his friend's aid, but the Doomhammer swung through the air and crushed the attacker's skull even through his helm. Durotan grinned fiercely. Orgrim needed no aid.

  He sensed the presence at his side before he heard or smcllcd it, and turned, bellowing his clan's war cry. He hoisted the gore-covered axe and prepared to bring it down. The child was barely out of puberty, but she screamed in fury as she tore with bare hands at his ar-morcd leg. Tears streamed down her pale blue face and her teeth were bared. Blue blood, too much of it to be her own, saturated her dress so that it clung to her body. She pounded futilely at him, her tear-filled eyes burning with pain and righteous fury

  For a horrible second she seemed to be the same girl that Durotan and Orgrim had encountered years ago. That could not be — surely that girl was a woman grown now. Or was she? But it did not matter. It was a female child who, both bravely and stupidly, was attempting to attack a mounted orc warrior with her bare hands.

  It was with an enormous effort that Durotan halted the axe in mid-swing. He would not harm a child — that was not the code, that was not the way of the orcs—

  Suddenly the girl froze. Her eyes widened. She opened her mouth and blood gushed forth, Durotan's gaze dropped from her face to her chest, and he could see the spear point tenting the blood-soaked fabric. Before Durotan could react, the Shattered Hand orc who had slain the girl shoved the spear to the side, forcing the body to the earth. He put one booted foot on her shoulder. Grunting, he pulled loose his spear and grinned up at Durotan.

  "You owe me one, Frostwolf," the orc said, then vanished into the close-pressing crowd of slayers and victims.

  Durotan threw back his head and cried his agony to the ancestors.

  On surged the orcs,leaving corpses in their wake. The vast majority of the dead were draenei, but here and there a brown body of a fallen orc could be seen. Some of the ores who fell yet lived, crying out for aid, but their pleas fell on deaf cars. Shaman could have healed them with spells, but apparently, warlock magics did not embrace the healing arts. So they lay where they had fallen, some wheezing out their last breaths next to the draenei they had slain, while the unstoppable tide poured forward.

  They followed the road through the foothills, entering each building as they went and slaughtering anyone they found. No doubt some draenei had hidden, Durotan thought, and prayed they would not be found. He did not think that prayer would be answered. Once the first round of slaughter had been completed, there would be the looting and the search for those who had escaped the first assault. He knew. It had been planned thus.

  They had reached the largest building yet, the one that sat highest on the mountain, and Durotan recognized it immediately. It was the magistcr's scat, where he and Orgrim had had dinner with the Prophet. Bitterly he thought that Velen was not much of a prophet if he had not foreseen this black moment. Nightstalkcr raced up the steps, and Durotan could not help himself. He craned his neck and looked over his shoulder, back down toward the city as he had done the first time he had climbed these steps on his own two feet.

  Then, the draenei city had been spread out like jewels on a meadow. Now. it looked exactly like what it was—a broken, taken city, spattered with blood and gore and the death not just of its citizens, but of any hope of peace or truce or negotiation. Durotan closed his eyes briefly in pain.

  I am proud of my people and our city, Restalaan had said to Durotan. Restalaan. who lay dead and stiffening on the white street along with countless other draenei. We have worked hard here. We love Draenor. And I never thought to have the chance to share it with an ore. The ways of destiny are strange indeed.

  Stranger than cither orc youth or draenei guard could have imagined.

  The rooms that had made two orc youths feel slightly penned in years ago now seemed utterly claustrophobic when crammed with adult orc warriors by the dozens. Most were empty; there had been time for an evacuation of all but those who had sworn to die in service to their city. And die they did, the guards who attacked them now. The beautiful, ornate furniture was used as weapons, brought crashing down upon draenei heads, the breakage adding to the thrill of the fight. Ores punched holes in the smooth, curving walls for the sheer pleasure of it. Beds were hacked with swords, bowls of fruit and delicately wrought statuettes swept off furniture that was in turn smashed by axe or hammer.

  Durotan had had enough. "Hold!" he cried, but no one listened. The creatures controlled by the warlocks seemed well pleased with this behavior, almost smug. But the time for destruction had passed, and the ruthless savagery would not serve the ores now that all the inhabitants of Telmor were cither slain or had fled.

  "Hold!" Durotan yelled again. This time Orgrim heard him and took up the cry. The Warsong representative also shook his head, as if to clear it of something hazy and obscuring, then he, too. tried to calm his warriors. Drek’Thar, back with the other warlocks, had not become as lost in bloodlust as the others, and he was able to stop the others from casting spells.

  "Listen to me!" Durotan roared. Most of them had reached the room where Velen had hosted them at his table. The room was empty, die chairs and tables overturned, the wall hangings shredded and cast to the floor.

  "We have taken the city, it is now time to take what we need from it!"

  They were listening now, their breaths coming in pants that filled the room with raspy sound. But at least they had stopped swinging their weapons at anything that moved... or even anything that didn't.

  "First we attend to the injured," Durotan ordered. "We will not leave our brethren to suffer in the streets."

  Some of them started guiltily at that. Durotan realized with disgust that many of these warriors had completely forgotten that some of their number still lay writhing in pain outside while they enjoyed die wanton destruction of the magister's estate. He pushed his feelings down and nodded to Drek’Thar. The warlocks might no longer have healing spells, but they had once been shaman, and knew how to tend battle wounds in a more mundane fashion. Drek’Thar motioned to several warlocks, and they hurried back the way they had come.

  "Next, this city has supplies the likes of which we have never seen. There are foodstuffs aplenty, and weapons, and armor, and other things we know not of. Things that will serve the Horde in its quest to—"

  He could not say the words he had planned: In its quest to wipe out the draenei. Instead he added somewhat awkwardly, "In its quest. We are an army. An army marches on its stomach. We need to be well led, well watered, healed, rested, protected. Orgrim—you take a group and start at this end. Guthor, you take a group and head back to the gates. Work your way up the main road until you meet Orgrim's group. Anyone who has any healing knowledge, report to Drek’Thar and do exactly what he tells you to do."

  "Wh
at of any draenei we find alive?" asked someone.

  What, indeed? There was no infrastructure to take care of prisoners, and in truth, the only purpose of a prisoner would be for negotiations. Since it had been made quite clear that the sole purpose of the Horde was total extermination of the draenei race, there was no reason to host prisoners.

  "Kill them." Durotan said hoarsely. He hoped the raggedness of his voice would be interpreted as raw fury rather than the agonizing pain it was. "Kill them all."

  As the ores he commanded hurried to obey his orders, Durotan found himself wishing that Nightstalkcr had not been so quick to protect him. It would have been easier had he perished by Restalaan's hand this day than speak the words he had just uttered.

  With any luck, during this horrific campaign to obliterate a species who had never raised a hand to them, death would find Durotan sooner rather than later.

  SIXTEEN

  The Shadow Council. Even now, so many years on, we know so little about who they were and what they did. Gul'dan carried many, many secrets to his grave. May he rot there in torment. It is difficult enough for me to understand how one or two may become so corrupted that they would doom their descendants for power in their lifetimes; that there were so many—the number is not even known for certain—is beyond the scope of my limited imagination.

  Yet even these numbers would not have mattered had it not been for the demons who held them in their grasp. Their pain, I rejoice in; what they did to others who obeyed them because they trusted them, I condemn with every fiber of my being.